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Rory Deveaux Quotes
The Name of the Star. I take my best lessons from nature, and nature says, "When something flies at your head -- move." The English will play hockey in any weather. Thunder, lightning, plague of locust...nothing can stop the hockey. Do not fight the hockey, for the hockey will win. If we get caught, I will claim I made you go. At gunpoint. I'm American. People will assume I'm armed. I spent about two hours online quietly trying to look up what you were supposed to wear to a pub, but the Internet is useless for things like that. I got a terrible range of advice, from American travel sites, to a bunch of English sites about how how all girls at all pubs wore skirts that were too short or heels that were too high , and how they all fell over drunk in the street -- which prompted another half-hour of angrysearching about misogyny and feminism, because that kind of thing drives me nuts. The fact is, when you live with someone -- or on the same campus, I mean -- and you have a mad make-out session with someone, you have two choices. You can either indicate that you enjoy your mad make-out sessions and intend to indulge in them at every given opportunity, or you do not acknowledge the make-out session, or indeed any physical attraction. There is no middle ground. One of them hung a pink bra from our lightning fixture. I left it there. It was a nice bra. And here's an amazing fact about the human mind: it can cope with a lot. When something new enters your reality that you don't think you can deal with, your mind deals. It does everything it can to accommodate the new information. When the information is so big and so difficult to process, sometimes your mind skips stress and confusion and goes right to a happy island, a little sweet spot. Keep calm and carry on. Also, stay in and hide, because the Ripper is coming. The hairs sprouted, and they were kind of cute, so I just let them grow to see what would happen, and what had happened was that I had a fine web of delicate hair all over my legs that I could ruffle while I watched television, like some people absently pet their cats. I was my very own fuzzy pet. And then, these champions would fumble around in the dark, saying, "IF SPIRITS ARE HERE, MAKE YOURSELF KNOWN SPIRITS!" This is roughly equivalent to a tourist bus stopping in the middle of a foreign city, and all the tourists getting out in their funny hats with their video cameras and saying 'We are here! Dance for us, natives of this place! We wish to film you!' I had no idea what to do with myself, now that I was actually out of the house. I saw a coffee place. That's where I would go. I'd get a coffee, and then I'd walk home. That was a good, normal thing to do. I would do this, and then maybe...maybe I would do another thing. But now I was a victim. I might as well have had the word tattooed on my face. And victims get strange looks and psychologists. Although it was very cold, he wore no coat. I think some English people think coats are for the weak. Don't get stabbed. It makes everything awkward. Some things are so bad that once you've been through them, you don't have to explain your reasons to anyone. Also, for the record, if someone is called a Romantic, it should mean some sexy times, I think. Instead, what it really means is people in puffy shirts who probably had a lot of real-life sexy times, but produced almost exclusively pictures of hillsides or people in dramatic poses, like pretending to be Ophellia dead in a swamp. I would still go back to school eventually. You can't curl up on the sofa and deny life forever. Life is always going to be a series of ouch-making moments, and the question was, was I going to go all fetal position, or was I going to woman up? I went into the fetal position on the bed to think about this. Fetal position turned out to be very comfortable. Someone had to help me. It dawned on me, perfectly and clearly, that I was going to fail everything. I'd known this. I'd even said it out loud. But I'd never really breathed that fact in. Smelled it. Tasted it. This was failure. Doing all you could and yet knowing that it just wasn't going to cut it. I wasn't in the land of long highways and big box stores and humid, endless summers. I was in London, a city of stone, and rain, and magic. I understood, for instance, why they liked red so much. The red buses, telephone booths, and postboxes were a violent shock against the grays of the sky and stone. Red was blood and beating hearts. And I was strong. The Shadow Cabinet. So much for all Thorpe's precautions. Busted by a girl and her trusty bicycle. Well played, M15. This life was direct. There was no screwing around with makeup, or wondering what I looked like. There was no phone in my pocket. There were things that needed doing, and I would do them. Category:The Name of the Star Category:The Madness Underneath Category:The Shadow Cabinet